Sunday, 19 March 2017

Did Saint Patrick Fund His Own Mission to Ireland?

We continue the series of posts in honour of Saint Patrick with a look at another of the questions raised by Dáibhí Ó Cróinín - did he, at least in part, fund his own mission to Ireland? Yesterday we saw that Patrick, then back in Britain, recorded a nocturnal vision in which he first read and then heard 'The Voice of the Irish' entreating him to come and walk again among them. Yet he also makes it clear that he did not act immediately on this plea. Indeed, as he says in section 28 of his Confessio 'I did not proceed to Ireland of my own accord until I was nearly worn out'. In his writings Saint Patrick makes reference to the elders (seniores) and to Ó Cróinín:

The implication of his words..is that Patrick's activities were, in part at any rate, sponsored (and perhaps also subsidised) by some senior churchmen in Britain. But he appears also to have provided his own financial resources for the undertaking, since he remarks in the Letter (s.10) that he had sold his noble rank (uendidi enim nobilitatem meam), which appears to mean that he sold off his parental estate.

Ó Cróinín then goes on to speculate that this may perhaps also explain the long delay in Patrick's return to Ireland:

Patrick may have been an only child...nowhere does he mention siblings. If he were the sole heir to his father's properties, Patrick could very well have sold them off to pay for his Irish mission. And if that were the case, it would explain too the long delay before his return to Ireland, for he may have had to wait until his parents had passed on before the opportunities provided by his inheritance gave him the necessary spur to return to Ireland.

Dáibhí Ó Cróinín, 'Saint Patrick', in A .J. Hughes and W. Nolan, eds., Armagh: History and Society - Interdisciplinary Essays on the History of an Irish County (Dublin, 2001), 52-53.

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Trias Thaumaturga is dedicated to the three wonderworking patrons of Ireland - Saint Patrick, Saint Brigid and Saint Colum Cille. It houses an archive of posts from my former blog Under the Oak and complements my current blog Omnium Sanctorum Hiberniae, where you will find posts on the other saints of Ireland.

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Omnium Sanctorum Hiberniae is the sister blog to this site and contains accounts of the lives of the Irish saints, plus information on the history of the Irish Church. Visit it here.

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I am an Irishwoman interested in the lives of our native saints. I am not a professional scholar in this field but attempt to keep up with the work of those who are. I am particularly interested in the many obscure Irish saints whose names fill the pages of our Martyrologies.